Hi Adam,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 4: I have an interest I’m actively pursuing, voluntarily devoting more than 3 hours of “free time” each week .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were benevolence, self-direction, and stimulation.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was openness.
You said your top three talents were analytic, social, and verbal.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you felt totally clear about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to grad trip planning .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Sleep .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Better mental space .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Drinking .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When it’s 12am, go home .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in Piano .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt Interested when receiving critical feedback, and Interested when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling nearly an extreme amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being work .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Health .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .
In one word, you said it made you feel Happy .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
| |
| Journey vs destination concept |
| Not knowing the next step is the reason we procrastinate. |
| Profession A,B, and C provide components to focus on for what you actually may end up being passionate about doing professionally. |
| Everybody learns at the same rate |
| I hope that person is able to ask out their crush. But also just to have if, then statements. |
| Deliberate practice can make anyone close to as good as experts |
| Always ask for advise |
| Everything in moderation is good. Even things perceived sometimes as bad. |
| Your brain is like a stupid dog |
| Make as many relationships as you can |
| Powerpoint corrupts absolutely |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
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| Krutin Devesh |
| Adam, I appreciated being your team member and getting to be in your presence for your comedic tales and wisdom offerings. It’s always hard to follow up whatever you’re up to in a given week(end), and my days were made enormously better every time I ran into you. Your entrepreneurial spirit is inspiring, especially in an environment where everyone wants to follow a traditional path and I’ve loved getting to see you work in a class setting. Don't doubt your drip -- If anyone could pull off gym clothes in class, it’s you.
Your startup project was awesome and a presentation only you could pull off. Before the presentation, I loved getting to hear about the business plan you were developing and the structure you were setting up to execute another startup. The creativity you had when it came to finding new business ideas is inspiring, like we talked about one time in class how you get new ideas in your head spontaneously and just try to write out plans for them for fun. I’m glad I learned how to maintain an entrepreneurial mindset as I continue to pursue my professional endeavors.
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| Caroline Keswin |
| Adam is one of the most positive people I have ever met. He came to every class with a smile on his face and was always engaged in our team conversations. Throughout the semester, he showed that he is empathetic, a great listener, and just an overall fun person to be around. He was extremely supportive of our team’s goals and pursuits, whether they were class-related or not. He also has such an interesting perspective on just about every topic we discussed and I hope his positivity and enthusiasm rubbed off on me over the last few months. I’m grateful to have been put in a group with Adam and I am excited to stay friends long after Grit ends.
I really enjoyed Adam’s discovery project presentation. Beyond the content of the project, what I appreciated most about his presentation was the genuine passion and enthusiasm he conveyed. Though his startup idea is extremely niche and not many people are informed enough to understand the complex nature of it, his passion is obvious and definitely shone through in his presentation. Regarding the content itself, I learned a ton about the process of starting a startup and the importance of surrounding yourself with like-minded, equally motivated individuals. I know Adam is going to do big things one day and I’m so happy I was able to be a part of his process!
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| Eileen Wang |
| Adam brought great energy and enthusiasm to our group. He was always quick to bring a smile to our faces and keep conversation lively. His ability to connect with others and bring out the passion in each individual brought our team closer together. I enjoyed being on a team with Adam and have no doubt that Adam will bring the same passion and success to all of his future endeavors.
I learned about some of the intricacies of launching a startup in Adam’s Discovery Project presentation. It’s easy to think about how to do so in practice, but I enjoyed learning about the specific approaches Adam took and the challenges he faced. Specifically, I was impressed by all of the different sources that he tapped into, including The Lean Startup, his curiosity conversations with founders, and then doing his own user research and testing. Overall, I felt that Adam did a great job walking us through his process, and I wish him luck in his startup journey! |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.